From Russian Silhouettes: More Stories of Russian Life,
by Anton Tchekoff, translated from the Russian by
Marian Fell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
October, 1915.

Ionitch

By Anton Chekhov

I

IF newcomers to the little provincial city of S.
complained that life there was monotonous and
dull, its inhabitants would answer that, on the
contrary, S. was a very amusing place, indeed,
that it had a library and a club, that balls were
given there, and finally, that very pleasant
families lived there with whom one might become
acquainted. And they always pointed to the
Turkins as the most accomplished and most
enlightened family of all.

These Turkins lived in a house of their own, on
Main Street, next door to the governor. Ivan
Turkin, the father, was a stout, handsome, dark
man with side-whiskers. He often organized
amateur theatricals for charity, playing the parts
of the old generals in them and coughing most
amusingly. He knew a lot of funny stories,
riddles, and proverbs, and loved to joke and pun
with, all the while, such a quaint expression on
his face that no one ever knew whether he was
serious or jesting. His wife Vera was a thin,
rather pretty woman who wore glasses and wrote
stories and novels which she liked to read aloud
to her guests. Katherine, the daughter, played
the piano. In short, each member of the family
had his or her special talent. The Turkins always
welcomed their guests cordially and showed off
their accomplishments to them with cheerful and
genial simplicity. The interior of their large
stone house was spacious, and, in summer,
delightfully cool. Half of its windows looked out
upon a shady old garden where, on spring evenings,
the nightingales sang. Whenever there were guests
in the house a mighty chopping would always begin
in the kitchen, and a smell of fried onions would
pervade the courtyard. These signs always
foretold a sumptuous and appetising supper.

So it came to pass that when Dimitri Ionitch
Startseff received his appointment as government
doctor, and went to live in Dialij, six miles from
S., he too, as an intelligent man, was told that
he must not fail to make the Turkins'
acquaintance. Turkin was presented to him on the
street one winter's day; they talked of the
weather and the theatre and the cholera, and an
invitation from Turkin followed. Next spring, on
Ascension Day, after he had received his patients,
Startseff went into town for a little holiday, and
to make some purchases. He strolled along at a
leisurely pace (he had no horse of his own yet),
and as he walked he sang to himself:

"Before I had drunk those tears from
Life's cup--"

After dining in town he sauntered through the
public gardens, and the memory of Turkin's
invitation somehow came into his mind. He decided
to go to their house and see for himself what sort
of people they were.

"Be welcome, if you please!" cried
Turkin, meeting him on the front steps. "I
am delighted, delighted to see such a welcome
guest! Come, let me introduce you to the missus.
I told him, Vera," he continued, presenting
the doctor to his wife, "I told him that no
law of the Medes and Persians allows him to shut
himself up in his hospital as he does. He ought
to give society the benefit of his leisure hours,
oughtn't he, dearest?"

"Sit down here," said Madame Turkin,
beckoning him to a seat at her side. "You
may flirt with me, if you like. My husband is
jealous, a regular Othello, but we'll try to
behave so that he shan't notice anything."

"Oh, you little wretch, you!"
murmured Turkin, tenderly kissing her forehead.
"You have come at a very opportune
moment," he went on, addressing his guest.
"My missus has just written a splendiferous
novel and is going to read it aloud to-day."

Startseff next made the acquaintance of Miss
Katherine, an eighteen-year-old girl who much
resembled her mother. Like her, she was pretty
and slender; her expression was childlike still,
and her figure delicate and supple, but her full,
girlish chest spoke of spring and of the
loveliness of spring. They drank tea with jam,
honey, and sweetmeats and ate delicious cakes that
melted in the mouth. When evening came other
guests began to arrive, and Turkin turned his
laughing eyes on each one in turn exclaiming:

"Be welcome, if you please!"

When all had assembled, they took their seats
in the drawing-room, and Madame Turkin read her
novel aloud. The story began with the words:
"The frost was tightening its grasp."
The windows were open wide, and sounds of chopping
could be heard in the kitchen, while the smell of
fried onions came floating through the air. Every
one felt very peaceful sitting there in those
deep, soft armchairs, while the friendly lamplight
played tenderly among the shadows of the
drawing-room. On that evening of summer, with the
sound of voices and laughter floating up from the
street, and the scent of lilacs blowing in through
the open windows, it was hard to imagine the frost
tightening its grasp, and the setting sun
illuminating with its bleak rays a snowy plain and
a solitary wayfarer journeying across it. Madame
Turkin read of how a beautiful princess had built
a school, and hospital, and library in the village
where she lived, and had fallen in love with a
strolling artist. She read of things that had
never happened in this world, and yet it was
delightfully comfortable to sit there and listen
to her, while such pleasant and peaceful dreams
floated through one's fancy that one wished never
to move again.

"Not baddish!" said Turkin softly.
And one of the guests, who had allowed his
thoughts to roam far, far afield, said almost
inaudibly:

"Yes--it is indeed!"

One hour passed, two hours passed. The town
band began playing in the public gardens, and a
chorus of singers struck up "The Little
Torch." After Madame Turkin had folded her
manuscript, every one sat silent for five minutes,
listening to the old folk-song telling of things
that happen in life and not in story-books.

"Do you have your stories published in the
magazines?" asked Startseff.

"No," she answered. "I have
never had anything published. I put all my
manuscripts away in a closet. Why should I
publish them?" she added by way of
explanation. "We don't need the money.

And for some reason every one sighed.

"And now, Kitty, play us something,"
said Turkin to his daughter.

Some one raised the top of the piano, and
opened the music which was already lying at hand.
Katherine struck the keys with both hands. Then
she struck them again with all her might, and then
again and again. Her chest and shoulders
quivered, and she obstinately hammered the same
place, so that it seemed as if she were determined
not to stop playing until she had beaten the
keyboard into the piano. The drawing-room was
filled with thunder; the floor, the ceiling, the
furniture, everything rumbled. Katherine played a
long, monotonous piece, interesting only for its
intricacy, and as Startseff listened, he imagined
he saw endless rocks rolling down a high
mountainside. He wanted them to stop rolling as
quickly as possible, and at the same time
Katherine pleased him immensely, she looked so
energetic and strong, all rosy from her exertions,
with a lock of hair hanging down over her
forehead. After his winter spent among sick
people and peasants in Dialij, it was a new and
agreeable sensation to be sitting in a
drawing-room watching that graceful, pure young
girl and listening to those noisy, monotonous but
cultured sounds.

"Well, Kitty, you played better than ever
to-day . exclaimed Turkin, with tears in his eyes
when his daughter had finished and risen from the
piano-stool. "Last the best, you know!"

The guests all surrounded her exclaiming,
congratulating, and declaring that they had not
heard such music for ages. Kitty listened in
silence, smiling a little, and triumph was written
all over her face.

"Wonderful! Beautiful!"

"Beautiful!" exclaimed Startseff,
abandoning himself to the general enthusiasm.
"Where did you study music? At the
conservatory?" he asked Katherine.

"No, I haven't been to the conservatory,
but I am going there very soon. So far I have
only had lessons here from Madame Zakivska."

"Did you go to the high school?"

"Oh, dear no!" the mother answered
for her daughter. "We had teachers come to
the house for her. She might have come under bad
influences at school, you know. While a girl is
growing up she should be under her mother's
influence only."

"I'm going to the conservatory all the
same!" declared Katherine.

"No, Kitty loves her mamma too much for
that; Kitty would not grieve her mamma and
papa!"

At supper it was Turkin who showed off his
accomplishments. With laughing eyes, but with a
serious face he told funny stories, and made
jokes, and asked ridiculous riddles which he
answered himself. He spoke a language all his
own, full of laboured, acrobatic feats of wit, in
the shape of such words as
"splendiferous," "not
baddish," "I thank you blindly,"
which had clearly long since become a habit with
him.

But this was not the end of the entertainment.
When the well-fed, well-satisfied guests had
trooped into the front hall to sort out their hats
and canes they found Pava the footman, a
shaven-headed boy of fourteen, bustling about
among them.

"Come now, Pava! Do your act!" cried
Turkin to the lad.

Pava struck an attitude, raised one hand, and
said in a tragic voice:

"Die, unhappy woman!"

At which every one laughed.

"Quite amusing!" thought Startseff,
as he stepped out into the street.

He went to a restaurant and had a glass of
beer, and then started off on foot for his home in
Dialij. As he walked he sang to himself:

"Your voice so languorous and soft--"

He felt no trace of fatigue after his six-mile
walk, and as he went to bed he thought that, on
the contrary, he would gladly have walked another
fifteen miles.

"Not baddish!" he remembered as he
fell asleep, and laughed aloud at the
recollection.

II

After that Startseff was always meaning to go
to the Turkins' again, but he was kept very busy
in the hospital, and for the life of him could not
win an hour s leisure for himself. More than a
year of solitude and toil thus went by, until one
day a letter in a blue envelope was brought to him
from the city.

Madame Turkin had long been a sufferer from
headaches, but since Kitty had begun to frighten
her every day by threatening to go away to the
conservatory her attacks had become more frequent.
All the doctors in the city had treated her and
now, at last, it was the country doctor's turn.
Madame Turkin wrote him a moving appeal in which
she implored him to come, and relieve her
sufferings. Startseff went, and after that he
began to visit the Turkins often, very often. The
fact was, he did help Madame Turkin a little, and
she hastened to tell all her guests what a
wonderful and unusual physician he was, but it was
not Madame Turkin's headaches that took Startseff
to the house.

One evening, on a holiday, when Katherine had
finished her long, wearisome exercises on the
piano, they all went into the dining-room and had
sat there a long time drinking tea while Turkin
told some of those funny stories of his. Suddenly
a bell rang. Some one had to go to the front door
to meet a newly come guest, and Startseff took
advantage of the momentary confusion to whisper
into Katherine's ear with intense agitation:

She shrugged her shoulders as if in doubt as to
what he wanted of her, but rose, nevertheless, and
went out with him.

"You play for three or four hours a day on
the piano, and then go and sit with your mother,
and I never have the slightest chance to talk to
you. Give me just one quarter of an hour, I
implore you!"

Autumn was approaching, and the old garden, its
paths strewn with fallen leaves, was quiet and
melancholy. The early twilight was falling.

"I have not seen you for one whole
week," Startseff went on. "If you only
knew what agony that has been for me! Let us sit
down. Listen to me!"

The favourite haunt of both was a bench under
an old spreading maple-tree. On this they took
their seats.

"What is it you want?" asked
Katherine in a hard, practical voice.

"I have not seen you for one whole week.
I have not heard you speak for such a long time!
I long madly for the sound of your voice. I
hunger for it! Speak to me now!"

He was carried away by her freshness and the
candid expression of her eyes and cheeks. He even
saw in the fit of her dress something
extraordinarily touching and sweet in its
simplicity and artless grace. And at the same
time, with all her innocence, she seemed to him
wonderfully clever and precocious for her years.
He could talk to her of literature or art or
anything he pleased and could pour out his
complaints to her about the life he led and the
people he met, even if she did sometimes laugh for
no reason when he was talking seriously, or jump
up and run into the house. Like all the young
ladies in S., she read a great deal. Most people
there read very little, and, indeed, it was said
in the library that if it were not for the girls,
and the young Jews, the building might as well be
closed. This reading of Katherine's was an
endless source of pleasure to Startseff. Each
time he met her he would ask her with emotion what
she had been reading, and would listen enchanted
as she told him.

"What have you read this week since we
last saw one another?" he now asked.
"Tell me, I beg you."

"Where are you going?" cried
Startseff in terror as she suddenly jumped up and
started toward the house. "I absolutely must
speak to you. I want to tell you something! Stay
with me, if only for five minutes, I implore
you!"

She stopped as if she meant to answer him, and
then awkwardly slipped a note into his hand and
ran away into the house where she took her seat at
the piano once more.

"Meet me in the cemetery at Demetti's
grave to-night at eleven," Startseff read.

"How absurd!" he thought, when he had
recovered himself a little. "Why in the
cemetery? What is the sense of that?"

The answer was clear: Kitty was fooling. Who
would think seriously of making a tryst at night
in a cemetery far outside the city when it would
have been so easy to meet in the street or in the
public gardens? Was it becoming for him, a
government doctor and a serious-minded person, to
sigh and receive notes and wander about a
cemetery, and do silly things that even schoolboys
made fun of? How would this little adventure end?
What would his friends say if they knew of it?
These were Startseff's reflections, as he wandered
about among the tables at the club that evening,
but at half past ten he suddenly changed his mind
and drove to the cemetery.

He had his own carriage and pair now, and a
coachman named Panteleimon in a long velvet coat.
The moon was shining. The night was still and
mellow, but with an autumnal softness. The dogs
barked at him as he drove through the suburbs and
out through the city gates. Startseff stopped his
carriage in an alley on the edge of the town and
continued his way to the cemetery on foot.

"Every one has his freaks," he
reflected. "Kitty is freakish, too, and, who
knows, perhaps she was not joking and may come
after all."

He abandoned himself to this faint, groundless
hope, and it intoxicated him.

He crossed the fields for half a mile. The
dark band of trees in the cemetery appeared in the
distance like a wood or a large garden, then a
white stone wall loomed up before him, and soon,
by the light of the moon, Startseff was able to
read the inscription over the gate: "Thy hour
also approacheth--" He went in through a
little side gate, and his eye was struck first by
the white crosses and monuments on either side of
a wide avenue, and by their black shadows and the
shadows of the tall poplars that bordered the
walk. Around him, on all sides, he could see the
same checkering of white and black, with the
sleeping trees brooding over the white tombstones.
The night did not seem so dark as it had appeared
in the fields. The fallen leaves of the maples,
like tiny hands, lay sharply defined upon the
sandy walks and marble slabs, and the inscriptions
on the tombstones were clearly legible. Startseff
was struck with the reflection that he now saw for
the first and perhaps the last time a world unlike
any other, a world that seemed to be the very
cradle of the soft moonlight, where there was no
life, no, not a breath of it; and yet, in every
dark poplar, in every grave he felt the presence
of a great mystery promising life, calm,
beautiful, and eternal. Peace and sadness and
mercy rose with the scent of autumn from the
graves, the leaves, and the faded flowers.

Profoundest silence lay over all; the stars
looked down from heaven with deep humility.
Startseff's footsteps sounded jarring and out of
place. It was only when the church-bells began to
ring the hour, and he imagined himself lying dead
under the ground for ever, that some one seemed to
be watching him, and he thought suddenly that here
were not silence and peace, but stifling despair
and the dull anguish of nonexistence.

Demetti's grave was a little chapel surmounted
by an angel. An Italian opera troupe had once
come to S., and one of its members had died there.
She had been buried here, and this monument had
been erected to her memory. No one in the city
any longer remembered her, but the shrine lamp
hanging in the doorway sparkled in the moon's rays
and seemed to be alight.

No one was at the grave, and who should come
there at midnight? Startseff waited, and the
moonlight kindled all the passion in him. He
ardently painted in his imagination the longed-for
kiss and the embrace. He sat down beside the
monument for half an hour, and then walked up and
down the paths with his hat in his hand, waiting
and thinking. How many girls, how many women,
were lying here under these stones who had been
beautiful and enchanting, and who had loved and
glowed with passion in the night under the
caresses of their lovers! How cruelly does Mother
Nature jest with mankind! How bitter to
acknowledge it! So thought Startseff and longed
to scream aloud that he did not want to be jested
with, that he wanted love at any price. Around
him gleamed not white blocks of marble, but
beautiful human forms timidly hiding among the
shadows of the trees. He felt keen anguish.

Then, as if a curtain had been drawn across the
scene, the moon vanished behind a cloud and
darkness fell about him. Startseff found the gate
with difficulty in the obscurity of the autumn
night, and then wandered about for more than an
hour in search of the alley where he had left his
carriage.

"I am so tired, I am ready to drop,"
he said to Panteleimon.

And, as he sank blissfully into his seat, he
thought:

"Oh dear, I must not get fat!"

III

On the evening of the following day Startseff
drove to the Turkins' to make his proposal. But
he proved to have come at an unfortunate time, as
Katherine was in her room having her hair dressed
by a coiffeur before going to a dance at the club.

Once more Startseff was obliged to sit in the
dining-room for an age drinking tea. Seeing that
his guest was pensive and bored, Turkin took a
scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket, and
read aloud a droll letter from his German manager
telling how "all the clisavowals on the
estate had been spoiled and all the modesty had
been shaken down."

"They will probably give her a good
dowry," thought Startseff, listening vacantly
to what was being read.

After his sleepless night he felt almost
stunned, as if he had drunk some sweet but
poisonous sleeping potion. His mind was hazy but
warm and cheerful, though at the same time a cold,
hard fragment of his brain kept reasoning with him
and saying:

"Stop before it is too late! Is she the
woman for you? She is wilful and spoiled; she
sleeps until two every day, and you are a
government doctor and a poor deacon's son.

"Well, what does that matter?" he
thought. "What if I am?"

"And what is more," that cold
fragment continued. "If you marry her her
family will make you give up your government
position, and live in town."

"And what of that?" he thought.
"I'll live in town then! She will have a
dowry. We will keep house."

At last Katherine appeared, looking pretty and
immaculate in her low-necked ball dress, and the
moment Startseff saw her he fell into such
transports that he could not utter a word and
could only stare at her and laugh.

She began to say good-bye, and as there was
nothing to keep him here now that she was going,
he, too, rose, saying that it was time for him to
be off to attend to his patients in Dialij.

"If you must go now," said Turkin,
"you can take Kitty to the club; it is on
your way.

A light drizzle was falling and it was very
dark, so that only by the help of Panteleimon's
cough could they tell where the carriage was. The
hood of the victoria was raised.

"I went to the cemetery last night,"
Startseff began. "How heartless and unkind
of you--"

"You went to the cemetery?"

"Yes, I did, and waited there for you
until nearly two o'clock. I was very
unhappy."

"Then be unhappy if you can't understand a
joke!"

Delighted to have caught her lover so cleverly,
and to see him so much in love, Katherine burst
out laughing, and then suddenly screamed as the
carriage tipped and turned sharply in at the club
gates. Startseff put his arm around her waist,
and in her fright the girl pressed closer to him.
At that he could contain himself no longer, and
passionately kissed her on the lips and on the
chin, holding her tighter than ever.

"That will do!" she said drily.

And a moment later she was no longer in the
carriage, and the policeman standing near the
lighted entrance to the club was shouting to
Panteleimon in a harsh voice:

"Move on, you old crow! What are you
standing there for?"

Startseff drove home, but only to return at
once arrayed in a borrowed dress suit and a stiff
collar that was always trying to climb up off the
collar-band. At midnight he was sitting in the
reception-room of the club, saying passionately to
Katherine:

"Oh, how ignorant people are who have
never loved! No one, I think, has ever truly
described love, and it would scarcely be possible
to depict this tender, blissful, agonising
feeling. He who has once felt it would never be
able to put it into words. Do I need
introductions and descriptions? Do I need oratory
to tell me what it is? My love is unspeakable--I
beg you, I implore you to be my wife!" cried
Startseff at last.

"Dimitri Ionitch," said Katherine,
assuming a very serious, thoughtful expression.
"Dimitri Ionitch, I am very grateful to you
for the honour you do me. I esteem you,
but--" here she rose and stood before him.
"But, forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let
us be serious. You know, Dimitri Ionitch, that I
love art more than anything else in the world. I
am passionately fond of, I adore, music, and if I
could I would consecrate my whole life to it. I
want to be a musician. I long for fame and
success and freedom and you ask me to go on living
in this town, and to continue this empty, useless
existence which has become unbearable to me! You
want me to marry? Ah no, that cannot be! One
should strive for a higher and brighter ideal, and
family life would tie me down for ever. Dimitri
Ionitch--" (she smiled a little as she said
these words, remembering Alexei Theofllaktitch)
"Dimitri Ionitch, you are kind and noble and
clever, you are the nicest man I know" (her
eyes filled with tears) . "I sympathise with
you with all my heart, but--but you must
understand--"

She turned away and left the room, unable to
restrain her tears.

Startseff's heart ceased beating madly. His
first action on reaching the street was to tear
off his stiff collar and draw a long, deep breath.
He felt a little humiliated, and his pride was
stung, for he had not expected a refusal, and
could not believe that all his hopes and pangs and
dreams had come to such a silly ending; he might
as well have been the hero of a playlet at a
performance of amateur theatricals! He regretted
his lost love and emotion, regretted it so keenly
that he could have sobbed aloud or given
Panteleimon's broad back a good, sound blow with
his umbrella.

For three days after that evening his business
went to ruin, and he could neither eat nor sleep,
but when he heard a rumour that Katherine had gone
to Moscow to enter the conservatory he grew
calmer, and once more gathered up the lost threads
of his life.

Later, when he remembered how he had wandered
about the cemetery and rushed all over town
looking for a dress suit, he would yawn lazily and
say:

"What a business that was!"

IV

Four years went by. Startseff now had a large
practice in the city. He hastily prescribed for
his sick people every morning at Dialij, and then
drove to town to see his patients there, returning
late at night. He had grown stouter and heavier,
and would not walk, if he could help it, suffering
as he did from asthma. Panteleimon, too, had
become stouter, and the more he grew in width the
more bitterly he sighed and lamented his hard lot:
he was so tired of driving!

Startseff was now an occasional guest at
several houses, but he had made close friends with
no one. The conversation, the point of view, and
even the looks of the inhabitants of S. bored him.
Experience had taught him that as long as he
played cards, or dined with them, they were
peaceful, good-natured, and even fairly
intelligent folk, but he had only to speak of
anything that was not edible, he had only to
mention politics or science to them, for them to
become utterly non-plussed, or else to talk such
foolish and mischievous nonsense that there was
nothing to be done but to shrug one's shoulders
and leave them. If Startseff tried to say to even
the most liberal of them that, for instance,
mankind was fortunately progressing, and that in
time we should no longer suffer under a system of
passports and capital punishment, they would look
at him askance, and say mistrustfully: "Then
one will be able to kill any one one wants to on
the street, will one?" Or if at supper, in
talking about work, Startseff said that labour was
a good thing, and every one should work, each
person present would take it as a personal affront
and begin an angry and tiresome argument. As they
never did anything and were not interested in
anything, and as Startseff could never for the
life of him think of anything to say to them, he
avoided all conversation and confined himself to
eating and playing cards. If there was a family
fête at one of the houses and he was asked to
dinner, he would eat in silence with his eyes
fixed on his plate, listening to all the
uninteresting, false, stupid things that were
being said around him and feeling irritated and
bored. But he would remain silent, and because he
always sternly held his tongue and never raised
his eyes from his plate, he was known as "the
puffed-up Pole," although he was no more of a
Pole than you or I. He shunned amusements, such as
theatres and concerts, but he played cards with
enjoyment for two or three hours every evening.
There was one other pleasure to which he had
unconsciously, little by little, become addicted,
and that was to empty his pockets every evening of
the little bills he had received in his practice
during the day. Sometimes he would find them
scattered through all his pockets, seventy
roubles' worth of them, yellow ones and green
ones, smelling of scent, and vinegar, and incense,
and kerosene. When he had collected a hundred or
more he would take them to the Mutual Loan
Society, and have them put to his account.

In all the four years following Katherine's
departure, he had only been to the Turkins' twice,
each time at the request of Madame Turkin, who was
still suffering from headaches. Katherine came
back every summer to visit her parents, but he did
not see her once; chance, somehow, willed
otherwise.

And so four years had gone by. One warm, still
morning a letter was brought to him at the
hospital. Madame Turkin wrote that she missed
Dimitri Ionitch very much and begged him to come
without fail and relieve her sufferings,
especially as it happened to be her birthday that
day. At the end of the letter was a postscript:
"I join my entreaties to those of my mother.
K."

Startseff reflected a moment, and in the
evening he drove to the Turkins'.

"Ah, be welcome, if you please!"
Turkin cried with smiling eyes. "Bonjour to
you!"

Madame Turkin, who had aged greatly and whose
hair was now white, pressed his hand and sighed
affectedly, saying:

"You don't want to flirt with me I see,
doctor, you never come to see me. I am too old
for you, but here is a young thing, perhaps she
may be more lucky than I am!"

And Kitty? She had grown thinner and paler and
was handsomer and more graceful than before, but
she was Miss Katherine now, and Kitty no longer.
Her freshness, and her artless, childish
expression were gone; there was something new in
her glance and manner, something timid and
apologetic, as if she no longer felt at home here,
in the house of the Turkins.

"How many summers, how many winters have
gone by!" she said, giving her hand to
Startseff, and one could see that her heart was
beating anxiously. She looked curiously and
intently into his face, and continued: "How
stout you have grown! You look browner and more
manly, but otherwise you haven't changed
much."

She pleased him now as she had pleased him
before, she pleased him very much, but something
seemed to be wanting in her--or was it that there
was something about her which would better have
been lacking? He could not say, but he was
prevented, somehow, from feeling toward her as he
had felt in the past. He did not like her pallor,
the new expression in her face, her weak smile,
her voice, and, in a little while, he did not like
her dress and the chair she was sitting in, and
something displeased him about the past in which
he had nearly married her. He remembered his love
and the dreams and hopes that had thrilled him
four years ago, and at the recollection he felt
awkward.

They drank tea and ate cake. Then Madame
Turkin read a story aloud, read of things that had
never happened in this world, while Startseff sat
looking at her handsome grey head, waiting for her
to finish.

"It is not the people who can't write
novels who are stupid," he thought.
"But the people who write them and can't
conceal it."

"Not baddish!" said Turkin.

Then Katherine played a long, loud piece on the
piano, and when she had finished every one went
into raptures and overwhelmed her with prolonged
expressions of gratitude.

"It's a good thing I didn't marry
her!" thought Startseff.

She looked at him, evidently expecting him to
invite her to go into the garden, but he remained
silent.

"Do let us have a talk!" she said
going up to him. "How are you? What are you
doing? Tcll me about it all! I have been
thinking about you for three days," she added
nervously. "I wanted to write you a letter,
I wanted to go to see you myself at Dialij, and
then changed my mind. I have no idea how you will
treat me now. I was so excited waiting for you
to-day. Do let us go into the garden!"

They went out and took their seats under the
old maple-tree, where they had sat four years
before. Night was falling.

"Well, and what have you been doing?"
asked Katherine.

"Nothing much; just living somehow,"
answered Startseff.

And that was all he could think of saying.
They were silent.

"I am so excited!" said Katherine,
covering her face with her hands. "But don't
pay any attention to me. I am so glad to be at
home, I am so glad to see every one again that I
cannot get used to it. How many memories we have
between us! I thought you and I would talk
without stopping until morning!"

He saw her face and her shining eyes more
closely now, and she looked younger to him than
she had in the house. Even her childish
expression seemed to have returned. She was
gazing at him with naïve curiosity, as if she
wanted to see and understand more clearly this man
who had once loved her so tenderly and so
unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for his love.
And he remembered all that had passed between them
down to the smallest detail, remembered how he had
wandered about the cemetery and had gone home
exhausted at dawn. He grew suddenly sad and
felt sorry to think that the past had vanished for
ever. A little flame sprang up in his heart.

"Do you remember how I took you to the
club that evening?" he asked. "It was
raining and dark--"

The little flame was burning more brightly, and
now he wanted to talk and to lament his dull life.

"Alas!" he sighed. "You ask
what I have been doing! What do we all do here?
Nothing! We grow older and fatter and more
sluggish. Day in, day out our colourless life
passes by without impressions, without thoughts.
It is money by day and the club by night, in the
company of gamblers and inebriates whom I cannot
endure. What is there in that?"

"But you have your work, your noble end in
life. You used to like so much to talk about your
hospital. I was a queer girl then, I thought I
was a great pianist. All girls play the piano
these days, and I played, too; there was nothing
remarkable about me. I am as much of a pianist as
mamma is an author. Of course I didn't understand
you then, but later, in Moscow, I often thought of
you. I thought only of you. Oh, what a joy it
must be to be a country doctor, to help the sick
and to serve the people! Oh, what a joy!"
Katherine repeated with exaltation. "When I
thought of you while I was in Moscow you seemed to
me to be so lofty and ideal--"

Startseff remembered the little bills which he
took out of his pockets every evening with such
pleasure, and the little flame went out.

He rose to go into the house. She took his
arm.

"You are the nicest person I have ever
known in my life," she continued. "We
shall see one another and talk together often,
shan't we? Promise me that! I am not a pianist,
I cherish no more illusions about myself, and
shall not play to you or talk music to you any
more."

When they had entered the house, and, in the
evening light, Startseff saw her face and her
melancholy eyes turned on him full of gratitude
and suffering, he felt uneasy and thought again:

"It's a good thing I didn't marry
her!"

He began to take his leave.

"No law of the Medes and Persians allows
you to go away before supper!" cried Turkin,
accompanying him to the door. "It is
extremely peripatetic on your part. Come, do your
act!" he cried to Pava as they reached the
front hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young fellow with
a moustache, struck an attitude, raised one hand,
and said in a tragic voice:

"Die, unhappy woman!"

All this irritated Startseff, and as he took
his seat in his carriage and looked at the house
and the dark garden that had once been so dear to
him, he was overwhelmed by the recollection of
Madame Turkin's novels and Kitty's noisy playing
and Turkin's witticisms and Pava's tragic pose,
and, as he recalled them, he thought:

"If the cleverest people in town are as
stupid as that, what a deadly town this must
be!"

Three days later Pava brought the doctor a
letter from Katherine.

"You don't come to see us; why?" she
wrote. "I am afraid your feeling for us has
changed, and the very thought of that terrifies
me. Calm my fears; come and tell me that all is
well! I absolutely must see you.

Yours,

K. T."

He read the letter, reflected a moment, and
said to Pava:

"Tell them I can't get away to-day, my
boy. Tell them I'll go to see them in three days'
time."

But three days went by, a week went by, and
still he did not go. Every time that he drove
past the Turkins' house he remembered that be
ought to drop in there for a few minutes; he
remembered it and-- did not go.

He never went to the Turkins' again.

V

Several years have passed since then.
Startseff is stouter than ever now, he is even
fat. He breathes heavily and walks with his head
thrown back. The picture he now makes, as he
drives by with his troika and his jingling
carriage-bells, is impressive. He is round and
red, and Panteleimon, round and red, with a brawny
neck, sits on the box with his arms stuck straight
out in front of him like pieces of wood, shouting
to every one he meets: "Turn to the
right!" It is more like the passage of a
heathen god than of a man. He has an immense
practice in the city, there is no time for
repining now. He already owns an estate in the
country and two houses in town, and is thinking of
buying a third which will be even more
remunerative than the others. If, at the Mutual
Loan Society, he hears of a house for sale he goes
straight to it, enters it without more ado, and
walks through all the rooms not paying the
slightest heed to any women or children who may be
dressing there, though they look at him with doubt
and fear. He taps all the doors with his cane and
asks:

"Is this the library? Is this a bedroom?
And what is this?"

And he breathes heavily as he says it and wipes
the perspiration from his forehead.

Although he has so much business on his hands,
he still keeps his position of government doctor
at Dialij. His acquisitiveness is too strong, and
he wants to find time for everything. He is
simply called "Ionitch" now, both in
Dialij and in the city. "Where is Ionitch
going?" the people ask, or "Shall we
call in Ionitch to the consultation?"

His voice has changed and has become squeaky
and harsh, probably because his throat is
obstructed with fat. His character, too, has
changed and he has grown irascible and crusty. He
generally loses his temper with his patients and
irritably thumps the floor with his stick,
exclaiming in his unpleasant voice:

"Be good enough to confine yourself to
answering my questions! No conversation!"

He is lonely, he is bored, and nothing
interests him.

During all his life in Dialij his love for
Kitty had been his only happiness, and will
probably be his last. In the evening he plays
cards in the club, and then sits alone at a large
table and has supper. Ivan, the oldest and most
respectable of the waiters, waits upon him and
pours out his glass of Lafitte No. 17. Every one
at the club, the officers and the chef and the
waiters, all know what he likes and what he
doesn't like and strive with might and main to
please him, for if they don't he will suddenly
grow angry and begin thumping the floor with his
cane.

After supper he occasionally relents and takes
part in a conversation.

"What were you saying? What? Whom did
you say?"

And if the conversation at a neighbouring table
turns on the Turkins, he asks:

"Which Turkins do you mean? The ones
whose daughter plays the piano?"

That is all that can be said of Startseff.

And the Turkins? The father has not grown old,
and has not changed in any way. He still makes
jokes and tells funny stories. The mother still
reads her novels aloud to her guests, with as much
pleasure and genial simplicity as ever. Kitty
practises the piano for four hours every day. She
has grown conspicuously older, is delicate, and
goes to the Crimea every autumn with her mother.
As he bids them farewell at the station, Turkin
wipes his eyes and cries as the train moves away: